Damascus History Unfolded

Carbon-14 dating analysis carried out at Tell Ramad, situated near Damascus, suggests that the site could have been populated since the latter part of the seventh millennium BC, around 6300 BC.

As per the accounts of the first-century historian Joseph ben Matityahu, the establishment of Damascus is attributed to Uz, a son of Aram, who is in turn the son of Shem, descended from Noah.

The earliest reference to the town's name, 'ta-ms-qu,' is discovered on a wall at the Karnak Temple in Luxor, inscribed during the reign of Thutmose II. This same spelling is also evident in a fourteenth-century list attributed to Amenophis II.

The names 'Dimaski' or 'Dimasqa' later appear in the Tell al-Amarna tablets on three occasions. Around 1260 BC, the Damascus region, like the rest of Syria, became a battleground between the Hittites from the north and the Egyptians from the south.

During the era of Alexander the Great, Damascus occupied a pivotal position as the most significant city in Syria and, remarkably, managed to largely avoid the ravages of war.

In the second and first millennia BC, Damascus emerged as a major city within a series of kingdoms.

In 635 AD, Damascus fell under the conquest of the formidable Muslim-Arab general Khalid ibn al-Walid. Twenty-seven years after the city's capture, Muawiyah, the first khalifah of the Umayyad, designated it as the seat of his government and the capital of the Arab-Muslim Empire from 661 to 750.
Damascus History Unfolded

Damascus: A major cultural center of the Arab world

Founded in the 3rd millennium B.C., Damascus was an important cultural and commercial centre, by virtue of its geographical position at the crossroads of the orient and the occident, between Africa and Asia.

The city of Damascus started as an important caravan centre and fertile oasis at the junction of important trade routes, according to ancient Accadian and Egyptian documents. Three major roads led out of the city; the western road led towards Egypt, the southern road led to Mecca, and the eastern road led to Babylon.

As early as 3000 BC, City walls were built around the settled area with “straight wide streets radiating outward from the concentration of public buildings in the centre”. In the 1st millennium BC, Damascus became the capital of an Aramaean principality. However it was the Hellenic era (336-146 BC) that first strongly contributed to the city’s morphological legacy.

Incorporation into the Roman Empire continued the Hellenistic tradition and gave Damascus the enviable status and endowments of a metropolis under Hadrian (ruled 117–138 AD) and of a colonia under Severus Alexander (ruled 222–235 AD).

Damascus became the seat of the Islamic Umayyad Empire, which extended as far as Spain and India between 661 and 750. Decades before Yaqut, in 1185 CE, the Valencian traveller, Ibn Jubayr saw Damascus as one of the friendliest places he had ever visited and said that'it surpasses all other cities in its beauty . . . the paradise of the Orient.

Damascus was described as a glassmaking centre by Ibn Battuta (d. 1377) and Niccolo of Poggibonsi who travelled in the Holy Land in 1345-6.

Damascus: A major cultural center of the Arab world